


In the absence of light

by Rogersruinedmylife



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Drug Abuse, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Ghosts, Klaus needs a hug, M/M, Sad Diego, Sad Klaus, Sibling Bonding, mentions of other Hargreeves siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-02 00:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogersruinedmylife/pseuds/Rogersruinedmylife
Summary: Being sober isn't all it's cracked up to, and Klaus can no longer tell if he's dying, or just being dramatic like Ben keeps complaining he is.





	In the absence of light

Klaus felt like his brain was pounding out of his skull. His tongue was dry in his mouth and his fingers itched for a cigarette to lay between them. He craved the warmth, the familiarity of it. The smell that grounded him. He’d even settle for a normal tabaco cigarette, anything to quell the nausea rolling inside his hollow frame. His hands were vibrating where they rested against leather clad kneecaps. Or maybe they were shaking. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore. His body was edging on hypothermia, despite the clamminess of his palms. He hadn’t felt this cold in years, not even in the alley ways he collapsed in that he called home. At least he had the stray dogs back then. The ones he had jokingly named after his long-gone siblings, a pseudo family for the one that looked at him with disdain and pity. Those dogs had provided him with warmth when he was too strung-out to crawl under the pile of blankets, he carried with him. They had growled and fought off other junkies, protecting him in a way no one ever had. Except Ben. Ben with his big dark eyes filled with love and concern. Ben who still reached to pull him from the dark piss-soaked ground when Klaus couldn’t remember his own name. Ben who got the same look of sadness and despair every time his hands phased through Klaus’s vulnerable form, unable to comfort him. Ben, who was dead and haunted Klaus more than any of the other horrifying things he had seen in his short life. Ben who he couldn’t save. 

The staircase grew darker as the sunset behind high arching windows. No one would find him back here. No one would care to. Klaus was used to being in a room with his siblings and never being seen. The only one who had found him was the young girl pacing back and forth in front of him. She was pretty, or she had been. Her pale young face had glass embedded across her left cheek, torn flesh hanging grotesquely from the open wounds. When she turned Klaus could see where her skull had been caved in. Once blond hair matted and dyed with dry blood. She screamed at him in a language he could not speak but understood. Her death had been unfair. She wanted revenge on the men that had brutalized and murdered her. Her mother was still looking for her body that was hidden under a pine tree in a forest coated in snow this time of year. Klaus hunched over to drown her out. If he closed his eyes maybe she would leave. It had never worked when he was a child, but he had to try something. The pain behind his eyes was becoming too much to bare. He could hear the dry rasp of a whine building in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to see the blood in her hair or on her distraught face. Not when he could still feel it. The warmth. The slick feeling of thick blood coating his fingers. Not when he could feel the thrum of Dave’s life disappearing in his hands. Not when the sweat on his palms felt too much like Dave’s, beautiful Dave’s, and the musty stairway smelled like decay. 

‘Get help, Klaus’, Ben must have joined him in the dark of the stairway. Klaus didn’t want him to see him like this. Pathetic and broken. Being high and drunk was one thing, being the shell of a man torn apart by a war out of time was another. He tried to shake his head. Or maybe his head was starting to vibrate like his hands had been. Maybe his body was finally giving up on him. After all, as Number 5 and Diego pointed out, he had been poisoning himself for years now. He allowed his head to roll sideways on his shoulders, eyes prying open once more to look at the figure before him. Ben’s gaze had always weighed on him more than any phantom ache or pain ever could. The combination of worry, love and distress made Klaus’s skin crawl. Even in death Ben cared for him more than any of their siblings. ‘Can’t a man die in peace, bitte?’ he muttered. His own voice sound distance and distorted by the chattering of his teeth. Was he dying? Klaus couldn’t tell anymore. 

He watched as Ben moved to crouch before him, his hand going to rest on Klaus’s knee but drawing back at the last second. Neither of them could handle the disappointment of Ben passing through him once more. ‘Don't be so dramatic, whimp. Go get Diego’ he urged, trying to maintain eye contact with Klaus. Diego, Klaus thought fondly, the one who tolerated him with only minor complaining. That called him baby brother. The only one, who when he told Klaus to stay out of the way, didn’t mean Klaus was a nuisance to be ignored, but to be protected. It had been so long since Diego had showed him any affection outside of fond exasperation and the lecturing about his drug habits. The last day and a bit felt like dream. Klaus still wasn’t sure he had actually followed him into the bar and tried to comfort him despite not knowing what Klaus had lost. He couldn’t face him. Not since he had figured out who the Cop that had died for him was. No matter how careful Klaus was in his destruction of himself, someone else always got caught in the line of fire. Diego had lost Patch, Ben was stuck watching his brother repeatedly try kill himself with drugs and Dave, sweet Dave, had died due to Klaus selfish desire to be loved. 

‘Look, I’m about to join you in the jolly land of the dead. Maybe this time I won’t meet Daddy dearest. So why don’t you drag your ghostly ass to the afterworld, and I’ll join you in an hour for some ghost toast’ Klaus smiled, the pull at his chapped lips burning. He could still see the girl pacing at the bottom of the stairs, throwing angry glares at him every so often. He pried his frozen fingers from his knee, giving her a cheeky wave that sent her screaming another stream of demands. This time he whimpered as her yells rose. He could hear Ben calling him softly, asking him to focus. ‘M’fine Benjamin. No Diego. S’all my fault, his sadness. M’fine, I’ll get up when I warm up a bit. S’cold Bennji’ Klaus chattered, bringing a hand back into his hair, trying to sooth the ache in his head. Ben stared at him once more and Klaus could see the need in his eyes. The need to reach out and hold Klaus as his body tried to shake apart. Klaus gave him a tired grin, trying to reassure him. Ben had always been the quiet worrier of their ragtag group of super siblings. He had been the one to creep into Klaus’s room when he heard the whimpers through the wall or heard Klaus begging the dead to leave him alone. Diego had been the one there in the morning with a teasing swipe at Klaus’s hair and a dumb dare to distract him. He wished he could go back to when he had them both, Ben’s quiet physical comfort and Diego’s easy smirk. 

‘Klaus, if you don’t get up, I am getting Diego’ Ben threatened, standing as Klaus’s eyes began to close. He was so tired. And cold. God it wouldn’t have killed their father to update the heating gin the thirteen years they had been gone. He huffed out a weak laugh at the threat. ‘Oh, I am so scared. What are you going to do Casper? Drift through him like a soft summer breeze’. He could make out the frustrated clench of Ben’s fist as his eyes narrowed in anger. Good, he thought, let him get angry and dissipate so I can die in solitude. ‘No matter how much of a dick you are, Klaus, I am not leaving you’ Ben hissed, running a hand through his hair. Klaus watched the strands fall back in place with a pang in his chest. Ben didn’t look a day past the day he died. He never would. Klaus was thankful he wasn’t bloody and decaying like the other ghosts he encountered. It was hard enough to see him everywhere without the violent reminders of how he had lost him. He felt the urge to wipe away the annoyance and worry on Ben’s young face. ‘M’sorry Ben’ he whispered, letting his head fall forward into his arms, ‘M’sorry you have to watch me die. Should be you here with everyone. M’just the extra. My fault you’re not here Ben’. 

His blood was rushing in his ears. Another voice had joined that of the girl pacing, weeping now about her mother. This voice was rough, their words teasing and harsh. It was too close for comfort, whispering over his shoulder. They had killed multiple people. Each sentence turned Klaus’s stomach with the grotesque details of what the man had done. Victims. More than fifty of them, all young and missing. Klaus could feel the phantom brush of a finger down his neck as he curled in over his knees, head in hands. They had been pretty, the voice cooed, pretty addicts like him, it teased. Klaus wanted to run, every hair on his body reacting to the whispers of the man behind him. Of what he would have done if he had found Klaus while he was alive. The bile rose in his throat as he tried to prevent the panic building in his chest from bubbling over. He tightened the grip of his fingers in his damp curls, tugging at them. Pain would ground him, it always had. He could hear Ben yelling, trying to get the man behind him to leave. The man simply laughed cruelly in Klaus’s ear. He was too close. Klaus felt the walls of the staircase closing in on him, looming like the dark walls of the mausoleum that had been his childhood prison. He was dying. He had to be, there was no other explanation for his body’s reaction. 

He didn’t know how long he had sat there. Only the sounds of his own struggling breaths were audible, his world narrowed to the cage he created around himself with his arms. He couldn’t hear Ben anymore and it scared him. He needed Ben with him. He kept the truly awful ghosts from creeping up on him. He could feel tears roll down his cheeks. In his panic and fear, Klaus had missed the sound of footsteps approaching from the hallway beyond. He didn’t hear the soft calling of his name followed by questions. He didn’t hear the twinge of fear that gripped the voice as they repeated his name. Or his own voice muttering, ‘No no no no no. Don’t hurt me’ between soft sobs. It wasn’t until warm calloused hands wrapped around his cold, skinny wrists, shocking his body out of its panicked stupor as it attempted to pull away from the hands holding him softly. 

‘Shush baby brother, I got you’ Diego’s voice washed over him. The hands grounding him as their warmth pulled him back from the darkness that constantly lurked inside him, threatening to swallow him whole. ‘No, Diego g’way’ Klaus mumbled weakly despite the calming and steady presence his chaotic brother exuded. He had caused Diego pain. Diego wasn’t meant to be helping him. ‘Can’t leave you here to rot bro, not gonna let Mom find you back here like a sad toy when she’s cleaning tomorrow’ Diego scolded, two fingers pressing over the pulse of Klaus’s right wrist. Measuring each unsteady beat, reassuring himself that Klaus was still here. It reminded him of the nights when Klaus left garbled voice messages on his phone, strung out and half insane. Those were the nights Diego spent peeking into back alleys and shady clubs, waiting to stumble across a collapsed Klaus. Every time he had felt for that pulse, weak but steady, before pulling a hoodie over his wasting frame and tucking some money into whatever skin-tight clothing he donned that week. It had killed a part of him to leave Klaus the times he had found him, but the alternative was filled with angry words and broken promises. They had been down that path before. It was easier to care for Klaus from a distance than suffer beside him each time he numbed himself to the point he forgot his own name. 

Diego moved to sit beside the prone form of his brother, Klaus still muttering incoherently, flinching away from his touch. His skin was like ice where Diego kept a steady hold on his right wrist. His complexion death like, eyeliner smudge with the few tears that had escaped his eyes. ‘Come on Klaus’ Diego encouraged, nudging him with his shoulder. Klaus’s head shook, damp curls sticking to his forehead, refusing to allow Diego to pry his hands from where they still tried to shield his face. ‘Open your eyes Klaus. You’re freezing. I’ll help you get to bed’ Diego sighed, rubbing his thumb over Klaus’s wrist soothingly. ‘No’, Klaus’s voice hitched with panic, ‘I don’t want to see them Diego. They want to hurt me. I can...I can feel him behind me, waiting. He’s going to attack me’. Diego’s head whipped around, glancing behind them as he automatically wrapped an arm across Klaus shoulder. His protective instincts flaring as he pulled the pliable frame of his brother into a protective side hug, his hand briefly drifting from Klaus’s wrist to the knife strapped at his thigh. But then his eyes adjusted to the dark, and there was no one there. Only him and Klaus, curled together in a dark, forgotten staircase. 

‘Klaus, there isn’t anyone...’ Diego began to huff, writing it off as Klaus being high before it struck him. A realization so sharp it hurt worse than the bullet he had taken from earlier that day. Klaus was sober, and something Diego couldn’t see was threatening him, reducing his eccentric, brother into a cowering child once more. Diego tighten his grip on Klaus’s shoulder, wanting to shield him from the horrors of a world only Klaus could see and perceive. ‘Who’s there Klaus? Ain’t gonna let no one hurt my dumbass baby bro’ Diego coaxed, gently moving Klaus head to rest on his shoulder. He could feel the shakes that wracked the other man's body. They rippled through Diego’s own steady form like a phantom ache. ‘I dunno’, Klaus words slurred against the soft material of Diego’s black sweater, ‘He’s killed people. Think’s I’m pretty and wants to add me to his collection. I don’t wanna go with him’. Diego wished, in that moment, he and Klaus shared a power. That he could yell at whatever creep was lurking behind Klaus. He wished he had the ability to use his knives on the dead. His fingers twitched along Klaus’s shoulders in agreement. 

Klaus tore him from his thoughts of fighting weird, serial killer-esque ghost over the soul of his drug riddled brother, with a shaky laugh. One clammy hand leaving the side of Klaus’s face to pat weakly at Diego’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Can’t go all stabby-stabby ninja on a ghost, Di. S’my problem, not yours.’ Klaus hummed tiredly, pulling himself away from the warmth of Diego’s body heat. ‘It’s my problem. My idea to get clean. My lovely decaying ghosts with no sense of personal space or civility. Yes, I am talking to you Blondie, oh don’t flip me the finger you whiney brat’ Klaus rolled his eyes, readjusting to the darkness around them and the girl who still paced in front of him. Diego lent back, bracing his good arm against the stairs, ‘There's two of them?’. Klaus nodded, his wry frame etched with sorrow and exhausted that made him look older than they were. ‘Yeah, she won’t shut up. She constant yelling about revenge. Well guess what sweetheart, we all have shitty problems. The world’s ending, those bastards will get what’s coming to them’. Klaus promised, gritting his teeth against the wave of nausea that swept through him. This whole being sober thing was starting to get old real fast. It was only bringing him pain and ghost who weren’t Dave. God, he wanted Dave. 

‘Who was Dave?’ Diego asked softly, picking the name out of Klaus’s mutterings. He watched as his brother tried to pull himself up, cold limbs resisting the movement, sending him backwards to sprawl over the steps. He watched as a soft smile crept onto Klaus’s sharp feature. It had been so long since Klaus had genuinely smiled that Diego couldn’t help the twitch of his own lips into a mirror image. There was an innocence about the smile that brought back images of the naïve, fresh face boy that jumped on bed, set fire to training manuals and did everything Diego told him to because Diego was his big brother. ‘Dave...Dave was beautiful. I loved him. He was sunshine and joy and he was not afraid to punch me in the face when I complained there were no drugs for me to take. You would have like him. He was ballsy, that beautiful bastard’ Klaus spoke in a revered tone. Diego threw him a smirk, ‘Anyone who punches you in the face for the right reasons is a friend of mine’. Klaus laughed, turning his head to grin at Diego before the haunted look in his eyes return. His smile faded, replaced with the somber look of a man who had seen too much. ‘I loved him, and he loved me. A mistake really. I destroyed him, Diego. He died in my hands because he loved me’. 

Diego knew he should say something, but the words that tipped at his tongue tasted like ashes in his mouth. The walls between them, built by their abusive father and years apart were too big and thick for the last few days to erase, despite the cracks. Part of him wanted to hug his brother. To cry with him at the grief that played out over Klaus’s own face. Instead he collapsed backward, lying in the tense silence, shoulder pressed to Klaus’s shaking one on the stairs. Neither of them cried. Their grief consuming them. Diego had balled up the same grief within his chest, feeling Patch’s absence like a phantom limb every time, he strapped on his knives or heard the police scanner crackling in the back of his car. Despite all their squabbles, their failed romance, Patch had been the one constant in his life since the Academy. The stabilizing side of his chaotic energy. They were allowed to wallow, he thought, glancing at Klaus’s silent form. After everything they had endured throughout their lives and the last few days, they deserved a moment to grieve like normal human beings. Their father had told him emotion was a weakness, obedience was strength. Both Klaus and Diego had failed him, their emotions running deep, too sensitive. They had always had that in common. 

Klaus’s body gave a strong shudder beside him, he could hear the leaner boys' teeth chattering once one, his fingers twitching restlessly where they brushed Diego’s arm. Diego mentally squared himself. He hadn’t always been there for Klaus, for any of them like he should, too caught up in his own anger. It had lost him Patch. He wasn’t going to let it take Klaus from him. Not now when his brother was painfully sober, trying to hold himself together as the world he had hidden from since the tender age of thirteen rushed back at him with the gracefulness of an out of control truck. He dusted his knees with his good hand as he sat up, ignoring the feeling of Klaus’s eyes on his back, the whine he made in the back of his throat from the lack of Diego’s warmth at his side. Instead he stood, turning to gaze at the mess his brother had become because of them, and offered him his hand. A silent gesture that spoke a thousand words, a promise of ‘I’ve got you and I’m not going to let you fall again’. He could see the way Klaus’s throat caught, the tremble of his jaw as he stared at Diego’s proffered hand. The flash of relief in his eyes that almost shouted, ‘I’m not alone’. 

‘Come on Klaus, camp out in my room. It’ll be like old times, you snoring and kicking me in leg and me waking you up by shoving a pillow in your face’ Diego smirked, ‘I won’t draw a dick on your face this time while you sleep’. Klaus snorted, laughing at the memory in question. One of their stupid dares from childhood that had led to a nine-year-old Klaus sitting at the breakfast table with penis’s drawn on each check. It was his fault for falling asleep first, Diego had argued at the time. Klaus still didn’t believe him. He reached out, letting Diego draw him up from the cold floor. His body still ached, and he still wasn’t sure if any of this was worth it, especially since he had yet to see Dave, but this he could do. He could let Diego care for him. He could open himself back up to the mischievous smirks and secret jokes they had shared as kids, allow. Diego’s arm settled around his shoulders once more, an anchor to reality. It washed away the sounds of the girl still screaming, of the man in the dark that spoke of his pretty eyes and pain. Instead, as they ascended the stairs slowly, he smiled again. 

‘Do you remember that time we shaved off Luther’s eyebrows in his sleep and convinced him he had a special form of eyebrow lice? Do you think we could do that again but like wax that hairy chest of his? He looks like a goddamn Furry every time he takes off his shirt’, Klaus raised an eyebrow. He watched as the smirk played across Diego’s. It softened the hardened lines that had settled upon his tan face since their father's death, bringing back the mischievous boyish looks he had had in their teen years. ‘Only if we can replace Five’s coffee with decaf and blame it on Allison’s mothering instincts. Kid will go nuclear, and that little brother, is a fight I would pay to see’.


End file.
